"Sacred War"

This is an interesting and rather ominous-sounding march that was composed during "The Great Patriotic War" to inspire the men and women of the Red Army. The title is translated sometimes as "Holy War".

A Splendid Weekend

Mila and I hit the road with the girls for the first time in ages for a very pleasant weekend in Plano with Dr. Bezant (aka the good Doctor Pheasant) and his wife Winnifred.

We were more than glad to escape Austin's 95-degree daytime highs. At one point I checked Weather.com and saw that it was 90 degrees in Austin and only 66 in Plano. What a difference 200 miles can make!

Saturday we went to the King Tut exhibit-- a wonderful treat from our ever-thoughtful hosts. Words cannot do justice to the experience, but I will record two of my impressions here. 1) Remarkably, our youngsters were able to hang with an hour and a half of the exhibit. 2) The craftsmanship evident on some of the artifacts is surprisingly primitive while many of the artifacts show a breath-taking degree of perfection. One must wonder how they were able to create with such precision all those centuries ago.

We also visited the Nasher Museum and another museum that houses a permanent collection of Asian art. Perhaps more on those in a later post.

Sunday Dr. Bezant and Winifred treated us dinner and a show at Medieval Times. I had taken this to be clearly something for the girls and had prepared myself to tolerate it, but I must confess that I found the experience very enjoyable. Perhaps the most memorable part was our green knight (each color-coded section of the audience is assigned a knight) chose Onni to be his "Queen of Love and Beauty" by presenting her a green scarf on the end of his lance. She was thrilled, as was Davis who got a pink carnation from the knight.

This video, shot at the Toronto Medieval Times, will give you a slight feel for what it is like.

song evolution

Here is my song-writing process exposed.

The seed:
Several months ago, I came up with the idea to do a song that was primarily just an Em chord played very loosely and ponderously with a vocal melody sung above it using a somewhat bluesy scale.

The inspiration:
Back in high school one of my good friends had a friend named Mary whom he really liked. I don't think that the relationship ever reached the point, in terms of romance, that my friend wanted it to and, very sadly, a few years after graduation, Mary was killed in an automobile accident.

So, after several months of this song idea going nowhere, I awoke this morning (May 2) and decided to play it on guitar and ad lib some lyrics. This had worked wonderfully once before. "Riding the Wave" was done completely in one hour-- from zero concept to finished piece. I don't think this one will be so tidy, but here it is (first draft/rough draft) no edits, just the rough flow that I scrawled out in barely legible handwriting (whether satisfied or not) as I strummed from verse to verse in a 10 minute free-flow.
-----------------------------------

understanding
the color of the rain
says you could be here once again
oceans narrowing, the beating of a wing-
undaunted, fearless, unafraid

(verse)
come back, Mary
come back, Mary
come back, Mary

just to picture the way it used to be-
two people standing in the reeds
breathing like the hour- it may not come again
listing the things you mean to me

(verse)
come back, Mary
come back, Mary
come back, Mary

(bridge)
oh, hail Mary
full of grace
say, what's up with you today
you've got your horn of plenty
poised above ? ? ? ? ? (no words here)
say, what's up with you today

(verse)
come back, Mary
come back, Mary
come back, Mary
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So, there it is. Naked and raw. I have already started making changes from this morning. We'll see where it goes from here.